Friday, November 24, 2006

The Alliance for Medical Research - another pro-ESCR group, the same basic story

Wesley Smith has a new article in the Weekly Standard discussing the deceptive video (mentioned earlier) from the Alliance for Medical Research. I wonder if the bioethicists at the American Journal of Bioethics will protest this complete fabrication of research by the Alliance for Medical Research?

Probably not seeing as they believe, "the abuses of science by proponents of stem cell research pale by comparison to the abuses of the right wing..."

But back to the Alliance for Medical Research. Here's their web site. You might find some interesting things if you take a look. For example, their FAQ section was copied and pasted from the International Society for Stem Cell Research's FAQ web site without citation. AMR's Fact vs. Myths is copied and pasted with citation from the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research. You'd also find a "stem cell primer" by Scott Gilbert, an embryologist who has let his "scientific" views become so politicized that he actually writes that the view that the life of a human being begins "when it can be metabolically independent from the mother" is "scientifically defensible." One new thing I also learned was that according to AMR's ethics section "After the male sperm has penetrated the membrane of the female ovum, the process called 'fertilization' is then begun. Fertilization normally occurs in the uterus." Hmmm... Odd, I always thought fertilization typically took place in one of the fallopian tubes. The ethics section also contains some really horrendous attempts at logic regarding whether cloned human embryos are human beings or not. Really, really horrendous.

Also of note, the Ethics Advisory Board for the Alliance for Medical Research has one member - Louis Guenin - whom I heard speak not too long ago and whom I'm guessing is the author of the ethics section of the AMR's web site.

I wonder if Mr. Guenin gets paid to look the other way as this organization creates a video filled with lies and distortions? Or maybe the question isn't if but how much?

I'm starting to realize it's fairly easy to start a pro-embryonic stem cell research/human cloning for research group. Have a press conference bashing those anti-science luddites who want Michael J. Fox to suffer, create a web site with information taken from other pro-embryonic stem cell research web sites, pay some pro-ESCR bioethicist to be on your ethics board, distort what somatic cell nuclear transfer is, etc., etc.